A very delicate situation

 [Originally written November 24 2020]

If there’s one thing I can say the Creatures 3 crowd are, it’s loud. Even with the new genome that discourages excessive expression, these creatures like to chatter. After taking that break and then going to the relatively quiet worlds of C2 and C1 first, it was actually kind of overwhelming!

The two Grendels, Daisy, Ash, Spruce, and Acacia were clustered in the Woodland, yelling at the top of their lungs, so after checking in on them, I fled to the relative tranquility of the Meso, where the creatures were a bit more spread out. Rose continued to chill up by the lemon pod. That seems to be her home, and I don’t expect her to move any time soon. Both of the youngest Norns seem to have found adult mentors, as Foxglove stuck close to Birch on the lowest level, and Amaranth played with Pine on the middle level.

On returning to the Woodland I decided to redistribute the creatures a bit within the metaroom to end the cacophony without significant disruption to their lives. Once my brain had recovered from the auditory overload, I made my rounds and found everyone in good health. Lilac and Ash’s entry into old age was heralded by one last(?) egg. Sequoia has five mutations, two of which are irrelevant pigment bleed changes.

Receptor

Gene 0095: 139 Antigen 5

Organ: “Current Organ^{(043 MITOCHONDRIAL FUNCTION)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Injury”. Chemical: “Antigen 5”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.255). 

Organ: “Current Organ^{(043 MITOCHONDRIAL FUNCTION)}”, Tissue: “<no tissue>”, Locus: “Reaction Rate”. Chemical: “Antigen 5”.
Analogue: Output = 0 + ((Signal - 0) * 0.255).

Normally, Antigen 5 causes injury to this organ, but for Sequoia it’ll instead alter his reaction rate in some way. The fact that this receptor outputs 0 when there’s no Antigen 5 in his system doesn’t seem to be having any harmful effect – if it caused the reaction rate to come to a stop, I’d expect him to be dead, as this organ hosts the reactions involving the production of ATP.

Reaction

Gene 0364: 091 Ag to Ab 6

1 Antigen 6 + 3 Glucose = 3 Antibody 6 + 1 Hotness.
Rate: 48 (Half-life: 5.8 seconds)

1 Antigen 6 + 3 Glucose = 3 Antibody 7 + 1 Hotness.
Rate: 48 (Half-life: 5.8 seconds)

Sequoia produces the wrong antibody in response to antigen 6. This doesn’t worry me too much based on my previous research, which seems to indicate that the antibodies don’t actually do anything chemically in Creatures 3. If they do anything at all, it’s fighting the bacteria itself rather than the disease, and frankly that’s not a problem when my response to any and all bacteria is the pink fog.

Stimulus

Gene 0535: 058 I have teleported

Stimulus: “<spare action>”, Signficance: “0”. Reaction: “Default (quiescent)”, Intensity: “0”.
-1 Pain, -1 Boredom, -1 Crowded.

Stimulus: “<spare action>”, Signficance: “0”. Reaction: “Default (quiescent)”, Intensity: “0”.
-0.992 Pain, -1 Boredom, -1 Crowded.

The Genetics Kit lists this stimulus only as “spare action” but based on the title of the gene it’s the stimulus of passing through a teleporter or warp portal (I’m not sure whether they have the same stimulus or not). Sequoia gets slightly less pain reduction from teleporting… though I’m not sure why teleporting relieves pain at all.

Edit: I later figured out that this is to encourage creatures to flee through portals when they're being attacked.

Meanwhile, I decided to introduce new blood to the population. I’ve been hesitant to bring in the Hardman breed despite them being tied with Bengals as my favorite, because I’ve already had such trouble with keeping Norns and Grendels together. But I figured that with Oak being as tame as he is, now’s the best time to try it. If any Grendel could get along with a Hardman, it’s him. So I welcomed little Sycamore to the world and immediately introduced him to Oak. This was a very delicate operation so I had to watch them very closely and train them very carefully. As such I spent most of the session with them.

At first I kept them in the Learning Room, with a cookie machine to provide a gadget to smack around and not a lot else, so that we could focus on learning how to handle anger. Once I was satisfied with their behavior I moved both of them to the Meso and kept a very close eye on them, though I did occasionally check in on the others; Spruce and Ash were telling Willow about how much they loved Daisy, while Willow politely disagreed, and Daisy herself was hiding behind the framework by the door to the Jungle, presumably trying to get away from her obsessive fanclub. Pine was hanging out by himself, and Acacia had gone off on an adventure to the Jungle. After a while, I moved Sycamore and Oak to the Terrarium, as Foxglove had just laid an egg and I already had Daisy’s in my inventory, so I figured I could proceed with normal creature management. 

I stashed the new egg and hatched the existing one, welcoming Fig into the world. My world’s naming scheme so far has been to use fruits for the Ettins and trees for male Norns and Grendels, but of course most fruit-bearing trees are named the same as their fruit, which takes out a good number of tree names, so I’m dropping that distinction. All three of Fig’s mutations are inconsequential – two minor nudges to pigment bleeds, and one slight increase in the intensity of the “quiescent” response to the stimulus of playing with a bug.